20 Second Timeout

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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Cavs Fire Mike Brown After Best Five Year Run in Franchise History

No one can be surprised that the Cleveland Cavaliers fired Coach Mike Brown. His fate was sealed when LeBron James quit in game five of the Boston series as a prelude to the entire team surrendering meekly to the Celtics in the waning moments of the sixth game, declining to foul to extend the clock and instead wandering around looking completely disinterested; after failing to reach their stated goal of winning an NBA championship, the Cavs clearly needed to sacrifice a scapegoat and owner Dan Gilbert was not going to put any public pressure on James, the two-time MVP who has been coddled by the organization for several years and whose impending free agency status hangs over the franchise like a Sword of Damocles. Despite being the most successful coach in franchise history, Brown never was very popular among media members--who did not find him to be particularly colorful or quotable--nor did Brown capture the imagination of the fans, many of whom ignorantly feel that they could coach a LeBron James-led team to 60-plus wins.

However, just because Brown's firing was inevitable does not mean that it was fair and it does not mean that the Cavs will find a replacement who can do a better job. My newest article for CavsNews.com places Brown's coaching career in historical context and sounds a cautionary tale for those who assume that the team is better off now (6/19/15 edit: the link to CavsNews.com no longer works, so I have posted the original article below):

The Cleveland
Cavaliers have officially fired Coach Mike Brown, an action that surprises no
one and certainly delights some misguided fans and media members—the same people,
I suspect, who called for Bill Belichick’s head a decade and a half ago.
Defense wins championships in pro sports but defensive-minded coaches generally
do not “win” press conferences, so media members often turn against such
coaches and sometimes the media members succeed in convincing the local fan
base that writers, broadcasters and fans venting their frustrations on talk
radio know more about coaching than actual coaches do.

Belichick
learned his craft under a variety of NFL coaches, helped the New York Giants to
win two Super Bowls as their defensive coordinator and then “failed” in
Cleveland—if you define inheriting a 3-13 team and transforming them into a
squad that won a playoff game just four years later as a “failure”—before
creating a dynasty in New England; media members were consistently unimpressed
by Belichick until the sheer weight of his successes finally muted their
short-sighted and superficial critiques of his wardrobe and his dry press
conference statements. Remember how the Cleveland
media used to mock Belichick’s play-calling? His New
England offenses have been shattering records for years but rather
than admitting that they misjudged Belichick the media asserted that Belichick
had nothing to do with his team’s explosive offense because he was just relying
on Charlie Weis’ genius, a theory that has been refuted in light of Weis’
tenure with Notre Dame. As a last resort, these media members like to assert
that Belichick “changed” after he left Cleveland but if you listen to the people
who actually know football—the players, coaches and executives—they will tell
you that Belichick got a raw deal in Cleveland and that he won in New England
with the same basic philosophy that he tried to employ in Cleveland. Does any
person with a shred of common sense believe that after Belichick was a great
coach in New York he inexplicably turned into
a fool in Cleveland before suddenly becoming a genius
in New England? Belichick is a football lifer
and the people inside the game have respected his knowledge for decades, even
when the media had a field day mocking Belichick. Did Belichick learn some
things along the way? Of course—it would be foolish to do otherwise—but
Belichick’s core football values have been the same for a long time.

Brown’s resume
is very similar to Belichick’s: Brown learned his craft under a variety of NBA
coaches, he helped the Spurs win an NBA championship (though Brown’s role on
that coaching staff was not as prominent as Belichick’s role with the Giants)
and then he “failed” in Cleveland—if you define being the most successful head
coach (in both the regular season and the playoffs) in franchise history as a
“failure.” Media members repeatedly insist that Brown does not know how to
coach offense, even though the Cavs ranked third in the NBA in field goal
percentage (.485) and ninth in the NBA in scoring (102.1 ppg) in 2009-10; in
2004-05--the season before Brown arrived in Cleveland--the Cavs ranked 15th
in field goal percentage and 17th in scoring. It is true that the
Cavs have upgraded their roster during that time frame but it is wrong to
ignore the fact that the Cavs became an efficient and productive team
offensively under Brown’s watch. The self-proclaimed “experts” in Cleveland
liked to credit former assistant coach John Kuester with anything that the Cavs
did right offensively but in Kuester’s final season with the team (2008-09) the
Cavs ranked sixth in field goal percentage and 13th in scoring, so
the above rankings show that the Cavs continued to progress offensively even
after Kuester departed to become Detroit’s head coach. By the way, Detroit fell from 39-43
to 27-55 under Kuester in 2009-10 and the Pistons ranked worse in both scoring
(29th, down from 28th) and field goal percentage (27th,
down from 16th). That is not to say that Kuester is wholly—or even
mostly—to blame for Detroit’s problems; the
point is that some members of the Cleveland
media portrayed Kuester as an offensive guru but that has yet to be proven to
be true.

When Brown
came to Cleveland
five years ago, the Cavs had absolutely no history of sustained playoff success
nor did the franchise have the right culture to reasonably expect to attain
that status. Brown pledged to make the Cavs a defensive-minded team and he was
true to his word: in 2004-05, the Cavs ranked 11th in points
allowed, 14th in point differential and 18th in defensive
field goal percentage; by 2006-07, the Cavs ranked in the top eight in all
three categories, in 2008-09 the Cavs ranked first, first and second
respectively in those categories and this season the Cavs ranked fifth, second
and fourth. Brown not only led the Cavs to the best record in the league the
past two years—the first coach to achieve this since Phil Jackson did it with
the Jordan-Pippen Bulls in 1996 and 1997—but the Cavs won more than 60 games in
both of those seasons. Only 14 teams other than Mike Brown’s Cavs have won at
least 60 games in a season since 2000 (the first season after the
lockout-shortened 1999 campaign): 2009 Lakers (coached by Phil Jackson), 2009
Celtics (Doc Rivers), 2008 Celtics (Rivers), 2007 Mavericks (Avery Johnson),
2007 Suns (Mike D’Antoni), 2006 Pistons (Flip Saunders), 2006 Spurs (Gregg
Popovich), 2006 Mavericks (Johnson), 2005 Suns (D’Antoni), 2004 Pacers (Rick
Carlisle), 2003 Spurs (Popovich), 2003 Mavericks (Don Nelson), 2002 Kings (Rick
Adelman), 2000 Lakers (Phil Jackson).

Getting rid
of a coach is the easiest move to make but now comes the hard part: hiring a
coach who will actually do a better job than Brown did, which at this point can
mean one thing and one thing only: winning an NBA championship—anything less
than that is a failure, because Brown already took the Cavs to the NBA Finals
for the first time in franchise history. Good luck finding another coach who
can guide the Cavs to 60-plus wins, let alone win a championship; fans may
think that coaching an NBA team is easy but a team owner should know better.

Brown is a
convenient scapegoat but the first thing that Cavs owner Dan Gilbert should
have done after the season ended was sit down one on one with LeBron James, pop
in a DVD of game five of the Boston series and ask James, “What was that?”
There is no doubt that James quit in that game; the only question is why and
James is the only person who can answer that. Considering that Kobe Bryant is
playing through an assortment of injuries, Steve Nash hardly bats an eye
despite taking numerous shots to his face and Kevin Garnett has persevered
despite having to drag around his surgically repaired right leg, it really does
not make a whole lot of sense to use an elbow “boo-boo” as an excuse—and what,
other than “boo-boo,” can you call an injury that does not show up on an MRI,
has been officially called a bruise and did not prevent James from firing half
court three pointers prior to game six of the Boston series? I am not saying
that James was not hurt at all but there is no reason to believe that he is
more seriously injured than a whole host of players who are still making
contributions to playoff contenders without uttering any complaints or excuses.

Do not buy
the nonsense that James quit because he got frustrated at having to do so much
just for the Cavs to have a chance to win—when you are a two-time MVP seeking
out a max level contract you are quite rightly expected to be highly
productive. Kobe Bryant’s supporting cast is constantly praised and yet look at
how productive Bryant has to be for the Lakers to win: during this year’s
playoffs, the Lakers are 7-1 when Bryant scores at least 30 points but they are
just 3-2 when he scores 24 points or less. During the 2009 playoffs, the Lakers
went 7-1 when Bryant scored at least 33 points (including 4-0 when he scored at
least 40 points) but they went just 8-6 when he scored 32 points or less,
including 1-2 when he scored 20 points or less. The Lakers went 6-2 when Bryant
scored at least 33 points in the 2008 playoffs but they were just 8-5 when he
scored 32 points or less, including 2-3 when he scored 24 points or less. The
bottom line is that no matter how good a team’s supporting cast is—or how good
it is purported to be—teams ultimately rise or fall based on how well their
best player performs: to cite just one other example, in the 2003 NBA Finals,
Tim Duncan had David Robinson, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker and Stephen Jackson alongside
him but in the clinching game Duncan rang up 21 points, 20 rebounds, 10 assists
and eight blocked shots. So, yes, it is true that James has put up some awesome
individual numbers but that does not “prove” that he lacks help; the great
players who came before LeBron James and won championships all put up monster
numbers during their title runs and James will have to do likewise in order to
win his first championship.

It is also
very weak that James is conveniently “on vacation” and thus unavailable to make
any comment in the wake of Brown’s firing. Does James really think that he can
remove his fingerprints from the “crime” simply by being silent? As the team’s
leader, he should make some kind of public statement; it would be nice if James
had enough humility and honesty to admit that Brown’s emphasis on defense played
a large role in helping him to develop into a top flight defensive player.

Unfortunately,
just like James stalked off without talking to the media in the wake of Cleveland’s loss to Orlando
in the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals, he left it up to his teammates to
respond to the firing of the most successful coach in Cavs’ history. Point
guard Mo Williams emphatically defended Brown: “Do I think he deserved it? No. My
question is: Who's out there that's better? He's not a bad coach. To fire him,
that's making a big statement. After him, you have to get a Hall of Fame coach.
I thought we prematurely acted on our emotions, as an organization. I think he
did a good job. If anything, bring in a veteran assistant. I think we just
could have gotten better instead of blowing it all up. Now we're starting over.”

Williams
makes an excellent point, because Hank
Egan once told me that it takes until “deep into your second year” before a
team has completely internalized a new coaching’s staff’s system. Assuming that
the Cavs fired Brown in order to fundamentally change their system, it will
likely take until well into the 2011-12 season before the Cavs are completely
in tune with the new way of doing things.

Center Zydrunas Ilgauskas
echoed Williams’ sentiments: "Obviously, we didn't achieve what we set out
to achieve, which is to win a championship. But if you're going to lay all the
blame on Coach Brown and think that's going to solve everything, you've got
another thing coming. I think we're all at fault--the players, everybody. You
have to, at some point, accept some of the responsibility. We all have to do
that. A coach only can take you so far. At some point you have to do it yourself
and we didn't do it. I think Coach Brown will be fine. He'll be coaching again,
and I'm very sure he'll have success.''

It is interesting that when
the whole Orlando Magic team seemed to quit in game three of the Eastern
Conference Finals versus the Celtics the players received the brunt of the
blame; the only person who criticized Coach Stan Van Gundy was Van Gundy
himself in his postgame press conference. Yet Mike Brown has been fired, in
essence, because LeBron James quit in game five versus Boston and Dan Gilbert apparently believes
that the Cavs have a better chance of retaining James’ services by cutting ties
with Brown. Gilbert and the entire Cavs organization have bent over backwards
for five years to please James and James responded by quitting in the most
important game of the season, hanging his coach out to dry in the process.

I’ll leave
the last word to Ilgauskas. Many people speculated that Ilgauskas had a beef
with Coach Brown after Brown did not play Ilgauskas at all on a night when Ilgauskas
had invited family members to watch him set the franchise record for most games
played (Ilgauskas eventually did set the mark) but Ilgauskas had nothing but
positive things to say about Brown, concluding with these words: “I just have
this funny feeling that they might come to regret this decision, unless they go
for Phil Jackson or something. You can throw all the names you want at the
wall, but the reality is different. I've been through a lot of coaches and
coaching staffs and, trust me, they're not all that good.”

About Me

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